OCTOBER CATCH-ALL

[khajidont]

WHO: Jaime Reyes & VARIOUS
WHERE: VARIOUS
WHEN: VARIOUS (are you getting the picture yet)
WHAT: A catch-all log for a few pre-planned logs in October! If you want me to write up a starter for you for either Blue Beetle or Jaime Reyes, I'd be more than happy to do so! Just send me a PP @ feygasm or PM me and we can sort something out.
WARNINGS: None so far!

Comments

FOR RIKU

[khajidont]

[Jaime likes spending time with Minato. Above all else, it's comfortable, in the way that they can sit in silence if they both feel like it, or if Jaime feels like talking, Minato will sit there and listen patiently to him. Still, Minato's the kind of guy who's very much in-demand (Jaime maintains that all of his activities are impossible for one person to accomplish, but Minato somehow manages) which means that he's not too surprised when Minato says that he has to leave for a while.

Jaime's no stranger to making himself at home at his friends' homes, and he's particularly used to Minato's, which means that it only takes him a second to decide to put the kettle on so he can have a cup of tea while he waits for Minato to come back. Just to be polite, he pads out into the hallway and hollers for his housemates:]

Hey! Does anyone else want a cup of tea?

[resipiscent]

[He's lying on the bed in Minato's room, reading a book when he hears a voice he recognizes. Tea, huh...? Riku sets down his book, open facedown so he doesn't lose his page, and moves to the door, peeking out to see Jaime.]

... Yeah, actually. [And then, as an afterthought:] ... Hey.

[khajidont]

Oh -- Riku, right? C'mon down! It'll be ready in just a second.

[Was he just hanging out in Minato's room? As Jaime walks back into the kitchen, fetching the teabags from the counter, he notes,] I didn't even know you were hanging out up there. You guys getting pretty serious, or what?

[Cohabitation is a big step!]

FOR CARL

[khajidont]

[When it comes down to it, Heropa's a pretty tight-knit community. That means one thing: job fairs. It's only a small, community affair, something that some local food vendors are taking advantage of as well as the local businesses, but as the youngest and least experienced among them, Jaime's been sent out to man the stand for Heropa's local garage, both soliciting for more help and encouraging others to give the garage some more business.

It's not a terrible way to spend the day, all things considered. He gets to sit on his ass all day and hand out brochures and business cards and people watch in the sunshine. Once there's a lull in what couldn't have been described as a crowd in the first place, he looks beside him and spots a stand for the local Animal Shelter, complete with pictures of adorable animals.

He props his elbows up on the stand, looking curiously at it, and asks Carl,] Did you guys bring any animals too, or just pictures of them?

[112ounces]

[ Carl is the least experienced in the shelter as well, but usually they sent people out who are good at convincing others to try to adopt animals in these kind of events. Carl is sent in their stead because 1) he's an imPort and thus attract more attention 2) he recently did an interview with imPort Beat that is apparently very popular among his demographic and 3) he has a nice face.

(No, really, those are the list of reasons his boss - a forty-something woman who looks like she would wear kitten sweaters regularly - gave him. Carl is less impressed with that logic, because most of it is completely shallow and superficial in his opinion. While's better now, he's still not very good at crowds. )

Carl looks up when someone asked him a question, a boy who looks around his age or older, he points at his table. ]

Got a dog and a litter of kittens cooling off under the table. How is it that it is October and it is still hot in this place?

[khajidont]

That's just how it is in Florida. If we're lucky, we might graduate to long sleeves by Christmas.

[Luckily, Jaime's acclimatized to the weather here, and more than that, it didn't take him too long to get used to it. The weather's different than it is in El Paso, but it gets equally as hot; it's all the people from the North or the East Coast that tend to walk around complaining about the heat.]

Mind if I say hi to them a little later? I can't actually adopt any animals, but... well, it's not like we're getting much foot traffic anyway.

FOR LOCUS

[khajidont]

[followorders]

[The city of Heropa is a much different place late night. It's still bustling and loud, but the sounds are a lot different from their daylight counterparts like the scream of a woman that reverberates through the alleyway up ahead.]

[OOC: Making this up as I go along, feel free to add anything you'd like.]

[khajidont]

[Jaime likes dealing with muggings. Muggings are easy. You've got the bad guy and the victim, and when push comes to shove, he's found that muggers tend to listen to reason when they're worried about getting their brains bashed in by some freak in a suit. Unfortunately, not all crimes they deal with are quite so simple, and sometimes? It's the criminals that are in need of some assistance.

If Locus ventures through the alleyway, he'll see smoke flooding through one of the open windows of a restaurant. It seems that in the midst of an ill-conceived robbery, the stove went unattended, and everything got a bit... flammable. At the entrance of the restaurant, the Blue Beetle is trying to usher customers out as quickly as possible, but the workers in the back are completely absent, not that he can focus on that immediately; a large, iron decoration at the doorway falls on top of one of the evacuees, and as Jaime lifts it up with both hands, he shouts behind him,] Can someone help get her out of here? I don't think she can walk!

[He's only got so many hands, and there are lots of people who need help. Maybe Locus can give him a hand!]

[OOC ; thank you for getting this set up! I was just putting down some headers to remind me who I was going to put logs up for, but we can totally work with this -- let me know if this idea works for you.]

FOR ROBIN (& POTENTIALLY OTHERS)

[khajidont]

[Jaime doesn't want to do this.

He knows that he should. That's not the problem here, not in the least; Wally was right to push for Jaime searching for a solution instead of just worrying about it, but the fact of the matter is, he doesn't know Robin. He trusts him as much as he'd trust any other cape, but this is important, and more than that, it's dangerous. They're dealing with volatile technology here, and it's technology that's directly plugged into his spine and nervous system.

That's why he asked Traci to come along as a safeguard. If anything goes wrong, if Robin triggers some sort of defensive mechanism, Traci will be able to take him down, no questions asked.

Khaji's not happy about it either - he still hasn't really forgiven Robin - but at least he's agreed that it's an unfortunate necessity. Once Jaime's gotten everyone gathered in his living room, he sits on the edge of the couch, fidgeting a little.]

All right, so... how are we doing this, again?

[performance]

[ Robin is curious, and more than a little anxious. Not in a bad way, per se — but he's never used his superpowers on anything with a mind of its own before. It should work. There's no reason why it wouldn't work. That's what he keeps telling himself, anyway, because confidence is key.

So he's standing in front of Jaime, hands in the pockets of his light jacket, pointedly not fidgeting even though he's excited and restless. The last thing Jaime needs is more reasons to worry.

So. ]

What, me mind-diving into your spine isn't perfectly clear?

[ A small smile. ]

I shouldn't need to do anything special. It's... essentially organic interfacing. Hands-off, brain-only. It sounds crazy when I say it out loud. [ A beat. ] Then again, so does this whole thing.

[khajidont]

All of this is weird. And that's coming from, y'know... people like us.

[It's nice to see that Robin's calm, even if Jaime's not really certain about this whole thing. He knows full well that Robin is doing him a favour, because they really don't know what the outcome of this entire endeavor will be; it could be dangerous, but if Robin's willing to do it, Jaime can't afford not to give it a shot.]

Anyway, uh, that over there is Traci, [he says, motioning for her to come on over.] My girlfriend. If you trigger anything wrong in there, or anything bad, she'll know how to handle things.

[And for Traci, at least, he can offer up a tiny smile.]

FOR ERIK

[khajidont]

[Working at the job fair for the day is a nice enough diversion. Jaime spends the entire time half-distracted, both people-watching and using the communicator's connection to his brain to idly see what people are talking about, even if he has no desire to actually talk back at them.

It just so happens that he actually does his job around the time that Erik is passing by as he holds out the business card and cheerfully asks the passer-bys,] Interested in working at a garage? Take one of our...

[...oh.]

...hey, don't I know you?

Re: FOR ERIK

[incogneto]

Jaime, right?

I'm Erik.

[ He smiles warmly-- warmly for him-- and takes one of the cards. ]

What position are you looking to fill?

[khajidont]

Right, Erik!

[It's nice to see that he appears to be doing all right -- well enough to be strolling around town, at any rate. Coming here works differently for different people, after all, and some prefer to spend most of their time holed up in their rooms instead of actually taking everything in.]

Nice seeing you again. All we're looking for is another mechanic; one of the ladies who works for us is gonna quit in about a month.

[She's pregnant, so it's time to not spend all her time underneath cars.]

10/6

[kanadian]

[ Kaidan and Jaime doing lunch is a pretty normal thing for the both of them. It's good, to catch up and see how things are going. Especially since they're not living together, but Kaidan likes Jaime, and he thinks the teenager could use friends who aren't teenagers from time to time. He's mature enough that it probably helps out. Sometimes, he feels like a mentor -- but not always. Kind of in a good way.

But this month it's been hard to schedule something, and eventually, after showing up at the restaurant, and finding that Jaime wasn't there, Kaidan was getting more and more worried. It wasn't like Jaime to be so inconsistent? Or rather, it hadn't been like him, but right now, it felt like that was becoming the new normal, and he'd squinted at the waitress, before tipping, after ordering nothing. It wasn't her fault his lunch partner didn't show.

It said a lot about how worried he was, that he wasn't even ordering any food. Being a biotic, normally food was going to be his primary concern, but Jaime was coming up right ahead of it, and he headed to the shop he knew Jaime fixed cars at, before knocking on the garage door, peeking his head in, without actually stepping in. ]

Uh, is Jaime around?

[khajidont]

[People disappearing has become normal. That doesn't make it any better, nor does it make it hurt any less, but it's so frequent and so unpredictable that Jaime can't do anything but continue on with his life once it happens, even when he knows when his loved ones are returning to places they don't wish to be, places that hold only death and misery for them. When Gon and Killua disappeared, he went to work. When Armin disappeared, he went to work. When Bart disappeared, he went to work. And when Ken disappeared...

Well, what else can he do, really, besides pretend like everything's business as usual? He misses enough work as it is without taking a day off every time he loses another friend. He keeps his head down and works, and if his boss notices that he's not saying anything, he's kind enough not to say anything. Having lunch with Kaidan is the furthest thing from his mind when he's just trying to get through the day.

Once Kaidan shows up, his boss jerks a thumb towards the side door of the garage.]

He's in the smoke alley. Do me a favour and tell him he can clock out for the day. Nothin' more getting done on this thing.

[The smoke alley, as it had been called, is just that; the little alleyway between the buildings that the mechanics usually duck into when it's time for their break, eating lunch and getting their daily dose of tobacco in. Needless to say, Jaime's not smoking, just sitting on a crate that's a little too small for him to look entirely comfortable on, legs kicked out in front of him and fingers drumming a restless tattoo his thigh. He's staring off like he's thinking hard about something, but in all honesty, he's not thinking much at all.

At least he's not until he hears footsteps in the doorway and turns, saying,] I'll be in again in a...

[It's Kaidan. The fact that they had plans has completely escaped him, and all he does is blink owlishly at him for a second before rising to his feet, immediately at attention.]

Kaidan? What's wrong, did something happen?

FOR BILLY

[khajidont]

[Maybe with the advent of superpowered heroes when there aren't that many superpowered street criminals to oppose them, there shouldn't be nearly as much street crime in imPort cities anymore. As it turns out, criminals in every world and universe seem to share the same kind of lack of common sense and self preservation, and superheroes still have plenty left to do.

This particular scene may be all too familiar for those who go on regular patrols: victims (two, a man and a woman, evidently coming home from a date, though the man seems to know the men accosting them) and the attackers (three that Jaime can see, equipped with a knife, a gun, and fists respectively).

The Blue Beetle looks like he has it in hand, but he's missed out on the fact that this is clearly gang related; there are two more criminals trying to sneak up on him, though he hasn't noticed them quite yet.

Maybe, just maybe, this is the sort of time where a friendly passer-by could lend him a hand.]

FORGIVE ME I AM LAME

[inmyothertights]

[Billy is literally just getting a coffee.

He honestly thought his crime fighting days were behind him. Retired superhero. Then he comes here and suddenly he's neck deep in this stuff; he goes for a coffee, witnesses a mugging, and-

It's automatic. He's in his space-spangled tights before he even thinks twice about it, and there's blue lightning hitting one of the guys.]

Hey! Watch it!

FOR TRACI

[khajidont]

[A nice, normal date sounds like exactly the thing that he and Traci need. It's not that they don't spend time together, but there's something to be said for going out for an actual date.

Then again, their idea of normal and other people's idea of normal may conflict, just a little bit. He shows up at her front door and rings the doorbell, some cheerful flowers in one hand - thanks for the suggestion, Kasumi - which is a commonplace sort of thing to do, and he's definitely planning on taking her out for dinner, which is also pretty commonplace... but he's fairly certain that other people don't think of going flying as date material.

Jaime does, though, so that's exactly what he's got planned. Go for a fly, take in the views, and then they can find some restaurant for dinner that they couldn't find here in boring old Heropa. It seems like an awfully solid plan to him.]

[booyahh]

[ The idea of a normal date sounded like something that was way out of their league but it was worth a shot. Maybe it actually go well and smoothly and they'd just have a good time. Hey a girl had to have some dreams, right?

She opened the door with a big smile and took the flowers with copious thank yous. It was sweet and actually pretty unexpected. A nice unexpected thing that surely meant a good time was coming. This was going to work out. Flight, take in views, see what they could do without getting interrupted.

After putting the flowers up in some water in her room she took to the skies with him and reached out for his hand. ]

This feels good. Super nice and just chill for a change. [ A much needed change. ]

FOR HIRO

[khajidont]

[Jaime agreed to train Hiro, so that's exactly what he's going to do. Not that anyone can tell by looking at him in his frankly oversized clothes, but Jaime does actually go to the gym once every couple of days. It's part of his weekly routine now, and has been ever since Kaidan's started training him around a year ago. Even with superpowers, it's important to stay fit. He'll never look like the muscleheads he surrounds himself with, but he certainly isn't weak anymore.

He'd asked Hiro to come meet him at the gym, and to dress for the occasion. It's got everything that they'll need; a room full of mats for general training off to the side, and all the weight machines and cardio they could ever ask for. If Hiro's anything like Jaime, he's not going to enjoy it, but hey, hero work isn't all fun and games.

Once Jaime sees Hiro walk in, he's quick to wave him over. Jaime's dressed to work-out too, dressed uncharacteristically in a tank top and baggy shorts.]

Over here!

[microbrobotics]

[ Hiro is DEFINITELY not going to enjoy this. He was already sideeying the "gym clothes" comment - does he even have any gym clothes? no, he doesn't - so the outfit he actually shows up in is his rattiest t-shirt / hoodie / pants combination. Said hoodie is a bit too short for him (finally) and hella bloodstained. Probably best not to ask what happened to that.

He approaches reluctantly, eying the exercise equipment with nothing short of dismay. ]

So ... I'm gonna practice controlling these with my powers, right?

FOR KEN

[khajidont]

[After Ken left Jaime's house, Jaime would have been more than happy to bask in the sheer joy of Ken being back, but of course, it was interrupted. Khaji had been silent for most of the time, perfectly happy to simply allow Jaime his happiness, but the moment Jaime closed the door to his bedroom, he said one word:]

Lying.

[That's not what anyone wants to hear after a heart to heart, so of course, Jaime sat down and got Khaji to explain in detail exactly what Ken was lying about. It wasn't about any of his happiness, none of his newfound strength - and thank god for that - but there's no reason for his heartrate to suddenly rocket after telling him a detail that ought to be as small as how much time he spent away.

It can only mean one thing.

Jaime's a patient person, though, and he waits a couple weeks for Ken to get back into the swing of things, to reconnect with all the people who have been missing him, and to have all the emotional reunions he's sure to have. Knowing the truth can wait. Eventually, though, on one of their regularly scheduled get-togethers, he decides that he wants to know for once and for all.]

I actually cooked for once, [Jaime says as he lets Ken in, and gestures for him to follow him into the kitchen.] C'mon in, it's nearly ready.

[amadaman]

[Ken's perfectly happy to fall back into their routine of sharing lunch. He's on his way back from a school friend's house today, so he has everything with him: school bag and notebooks and textbooks and, in addition, an extra bag that seems to be filled with white fabric. Who knows, maybe it's a class project. And he's grinning at Jaime's announcement.]

I was starving, so I'm glad we don't have to go out and get anything, then. What did you make?